the-richmonds.net

Erg.  Sometimes I can be so dumb!

Our auto insurance bill has been going up by about $5/month every six months since we signed on with State Farm two and half years ago.  What started as a $120/mo payment is now $150 a month.  I decided to shop around.

At one point, I thought I was on Progressive's website and filled out a form with my contact informaton,  and the type of insurance I was looking for, including driver's ages and types of vehicles.  I hit submit and was taken to a screen that listed off a half-dozen websites of insurance companies that they recommended for me (third on the list was Progressive).  Only ten seconds later, as I was taking in the fact that I was NOT on a Progressive page, and was in fact on a cleverly disguised NetQuote page, my cell phone rang showing a toll-free number on the caller ID.  I always ignore numbers that I don't know.  A google search of the number showed that it was Liberty Mutual.  Two minutes later, another unfamiliar number called, turned out to be 21st Century Insurance.  Since then, my phone (which can go silent for days at a time) has been ringing at least once an hour during business hours.  Allstate, Farmers, you name the company, they've been calling.  And since I filled out the form, they're not "unsolicited" calls.  Hopefully they'll give up on me soon enough.  I don't like having a phone that rings this much!

Oh, and a simple conversation with our agent (who I had no intention of leaving, as he is family) got my bill down a bit.  Turns out we were missing a couple of discounts, and if we can hang on until October, we'll be getting a substantial discount for being accident-free for the three years that we will have been insured with the company.

Some of the latest things that Hannah has said that have made us smile (or laugh out loud!):

We ate out at Max & Erma's the other night, and partway through the meal,  I was thinking of ordering one the restaurant's famous make-your-own sundaes. I mentioned to the kids that if they finished their meals nicely, they could have a yummy treat for dessert.  Hannah piped in, "Yeah, like fruit!"  (We settled on fresh baked cookies, and we were all happy).

Today after church, we went up to redeem the Groupon that we purchased last month, entitling us to a one-year family membership at the Akron Zoo.  When Hannah found out we were going to the zoo, she said that she hoped "to see elephants, giraffes, and pigs."  I thought that was an interesting mixture of exotic animals.  We didn't wind up seeing any of the above, but we had a fun time nonetheless!

Addendum, 3-22-11:
Last night, Heather told me about a conversation between Hannah and Amy (a friend of ours who was watching the kids for the morning).  Amy was making peanut butter sandwiches for the kids, and she asked Hannah if she or Mason had any nut allergies.  "Oh, yes, we have those."  Amy was confused because Hannah said that they eat peanut butter, but can't have peanuts.  She explained to Hannah that if she were allergic to peanuts, she would be allergic to peanut butter.  Hannah adminted, "Well, I guess we're not allergic to peanuts.  Mommy just doesn't let us have them so we don't choke on them."

Sometimes, the game of geocaching turns up treasures totally unrelated to the hobby.  Two recent hunts yielded such treasures.  Well, maybe "treasure" is not the best word.

While seaching for a cache near the old Goodyear Blimp hangar in Akron, I came across a purse near ground zero (in this game, "ground zero" refers to the GPS coordinates where I should begin my hunt for the cache).  It kind of appeared to be rummaged through an discarded, and there was almost nothing in the purse.  I recognized the Prada name on the logo, even though I'm a fashion ignoramus.  I knew it had the potential to be worth a tidy sum. If it was indeed a $700 purse, it would be worth cleaning up a bit.  Before I put any effort into cleaning it, however, I decided to research the authenticity of the purse.  Everything checked out on the outside, but when I went inside to check for the metal badge, I noticed a "made in china" tag sewed into one of the seams. I tossed it. :-)

On Tuesday, I went hunting for a newly placed cache in some woods less than a mile from our house.  I didn't find the cache (and as of yet, no one else has, either, so I suspect it is not there).  I did find a nice piece of 6x8 pressure-treated lumber though!  Brought it out and will cut it up to use as trailer blocking.

Note:  I just did a search for "Prada" and "Made In China" together, and came up with some interesting pages that lead me to believe that the purse may have been a low-end authentic Prada, as they've been sourcing out some of their products to the Orient in the last few years... I don't know what "low end" means with Prada, but it probably was still not worth cleaning up.  Oh well, the trash has ben taken away already!

The latest news from the world of annoying things:

The touchpad on our laptop does not let me left-click anymore.  One minute it worked, and as I was actually midway through doing some work on the computer two nights ago, the tap-to-click feature (which I use mostly) stopped working.  The left click button was also not functional.  Right click still worked, so I swapped the button functionality (I reinstalled drivers, etc., so I'm fairly certain this is a hardware problem).

Now I'll need to get us a USB mouse (unless a new touchpad is easy and comparabile in price), since all of the external mice that I have in my box-o-computer-junk downstairs are PS/2 or serial, and I don't have anything but USB ports on the laptop...

There's just something about our house that does not like for us to go away for long!

Last year, the furnace shut off at some point early during our time in New England (we returned to a house with an interior temperature somewhere in the teens, frozen water supply lines, and water dripping from the ceiling of the garage and freezing all over our spare dining room chairs).

Monday night (Tuesday morning, really), upon our return from visiting family in Albany, I went into the basement to grab something from the office supply cabinet, and noticed a squishy wet feeling under my feet.... I haven't had time to pinpoint the leak, but I suspect that the rain in conjunction with the thaw while we were gone caused some water to seep through the foundation between the garage and the basement.  I pulled all of the sopping carpet up so the water could flow to the floor drain. The cement dried quickly (no further signs of water coming in).  The dehumidifier is running now, to help dry off the carpet.  We were fortunate in that there was no damage to anything that we had stored down there, but there were several things that were within inches of being in the water, including the box containing Heather's wedding dress, the bookshelf full of our lesser-used cookbooks, the computer, and some of the same dining room chairs that were slightly damaged last year.

Book season is back in full swing again, after a couple of months off.  On top of that, without any solicitation for business on my part, business for Richmond Property Services has been picking up.  I went ahead and set up a local phone number and had some business cards printed off for RPS.  I'm also looking into the logistics and pontential of setting up a Thermadome distribution operation here in Northeast Ohio.  With some degree of uncertainty involved in the future of any one of those markets, it does not seem like a bad idea to simultaneously diversify my career options.

Rick has been very good to us, and has been encouraging me to pursue my handyman work on the side, knowing that is ultimately what I would like to be able to support our family with.  He is also supportive of anything that will work out with the Thermadomes.  Whatever happens, there will be a period of transition as things reach an "equilibrium," and for now I'm still committed to working full-time with Rick and the books.

For the last few handyman jobs I have done, I've made no profit; anything over material cost for each job went right into tools.  Last month saw added to the RPS tool arsenal a 10" chopsaw and a (constructed to the point of functionality, but still unfinished as of right now) ladder rack for the truck, among several other small tools and organizing items.  If I get the job I'm bidding right now, that will bring an air compressor and a finishing nailer into the garage, which should cover just about any future jobs that will come in (and I can start making profit with my side work)!

Our house has been losing water pressure drastically over the last four weeks.  I put a gallon pitcher under several of the faucets in the house and got no more than ¾ of a gallon per minute flow rate.  Toilets took 4 minutes to fill after flushing, and the washing machine took almost half an hour to fill.  The landlord sent a plumber over today, and he replaced a section of old galvanized pipe on the street side of the water meter in the basement.  In that mere two feet, there were four 90° elbows, two unions, and an old gate valve, all of which were pretty much 100% clogged.  We now have more water pressure than we've had in this house since we moved in a year and a half ago.  After taking Mason to the bathroom this afternoon, we were actually able to wash our hands with no noticable diminish in water pressure at the faucet WHILE the toilet was flushing.  Just for kicks, I turned on the bathtub faucet at the same time and got full pressure out of that, too!  Amazing stuff!  Yay for clean pipes!

I stumbled across this search engine and thought it was pretty cool.  I think it may be my new favorite....  It doesn't just search through indexed websites, but treats each search as a computation.  The results of that computation are presented in a consistent format.  Whether seaching for information on a particular location (city, state, etc.), measurement conversions, solving for a variable in a mathematic equation, or mapping logic circuits, I've been impressed by the results!  There were some examples on the homepage of other things it could do, but I haven't tried them all out yet.  This would have been a handy tool in high school and college for research projects!

Wolfram|Alpha Computational Knowledge Engine

Yesterday, Heather and I were teaching Hannah's Sunday School class.  For part of the class, three rooms come together for a music time (kids ages 3½ through 5½).  As a lead-in to Joy to the World, the couple leading the music asked the kids if any of them knew what was special about Christmas.  As should be expected, the first boy said "We get presents."  The second boy called on said "Santa comes."  No more hands after that, until Hannah realized that no one else was going to say what she knew.... "It's Jesus' birthday!"

Later in the day, after a few frustrating hours of the kids not listening and getting into all sorts of trouble, I mentioned that at this time of the year, most kids are on their best behavior, then asked Hannah if she knew why that would be?  Once again, without missing a beat, she replied "because it's Jesus' birthday!"  Well, it was hard for me to make a point out of "being on your best behavior to get presents" with that response... and it was hard not to smile at her understanding of Christmas at such a young age.

My five-year-old daughter knows why we celebrate Christmas.
How come the rest of the world doesn't get it?

Since we've moved in to our home in Massillon, we've been getting mail solicitations from First Merit Bank, with a branch located just one block from us.  The first few I discarded, since I was tied to Citizens Bank with the truck loan.  After July (the final truck payment), I did at least glance through the flyers when they came, but I had no reason to leave Citizens.  I was able to do all of my regular banking transactions through the local Charter One branch, although customer service with Citizens had been less than satisfactory (in my opinion) since I was dealing with them exclusively over the phone for any kind of account maintenance issues.

This past week, another First Merit flyer came in the mail, only this time it happened to arrive in a pile of mail that also contained a notice of Citizens' new policy change for each of our "free" accounts with them.  Turns out, they're instituting a $4.99 per month per account maintenance fee unless certain criteria are met as far as account balances, transactions, etc.  We will probably not meet those criteria most of the time, so it's kind of insulting to me to say "you don't have enough money with us, so we're going to take some away from you every month so you have even less."

I went to First Merit yesterday with the family, and spent around an hour with a very personable agent.  We set up two "Reality Checking" accounts and a savings account (which will actually be accruaing an almost 1% APY, as opposed to costing me $4.99 each month), which will replace the accounts we intend to close at Citizens before the new policies take effect in December.  It was also nice to know I will be banking with a locally owned and operated institution, based out of Akron and serving the Northeast Ohio area (Citizens is owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland).  In addition to supporting the local economy, this will be nice in a few years when we go to look for a home loan again.... since I've sworn off of national banks after our very impersonal experience with Countrywide!

How much is my business worth to Citizens?  I'd say abuot $5 per account per month... How much is Citizens worth to me?  Certainly not $180 a year!  I don't think they'll be upset to loose my meager accounts to a local bank....